week 10 Wicked Clouds & a Skeletal Bone by Susan

Well, I've had 2 crazy weather adventures 2 weeks in a row. I'm on a roll! This morning was really quite amazing at WB. When I arrived, it was looking rather threatening. Then the sun came out while I was walking my zone. I made it to the end at beach access #32, when it poured very hard for only about 60 seconds. On my return trip the weather varied wildly between sun, then clouds, then seriously black clouds with thunder and lightning. I know the weather changes quickly on the coast here, but sheesh!

One neat thing about the weather was that it made for some cool cloud formations and awesome shell hunting.

I did, however, complete one full walk of my zone, then go back and look for shells just so that I wouldn't be distracted the first time around!

The two areas with the most litter in my zone this morning were right around Johnnie Mercer's Pier, and at beach access #29. (There is a large hotel at this access, but I am not sure what it is called.) There was just so much litter in both of these spots-- really overwhelming amounts. I collected one full bag of trash at each of these spots, then a third bag through the remainder of my zone. I also filled my reusable bag about 3/4 full, which is equivalent to 3 bags of recyclables. Large items that I took to the trash right away included some sort of large plastic horn, 2 broken shovels, and 1 tee shirt.

Recyclables today included 2 beer bottles, 11 plastic water/iced tea/soda bottles, 5 beer cans, and 8 plastic sand toys.

I discarded my trash at the beach today rather than bringing it home and sorting it, so I'm not sure about the counts there. However, there were an awful lot of plastic water bottle caps.

And it felt like I was picking up another straw every time I turned around. There were so, so many straws, and lots of other plastic litter today as well, such as these bracelets. I am not sure what these are from, but there were several of them. This one had green smiley faces on it, but the majority of the ones I found were neon orange.

The most interesting thing I found today was what I at first thought was a large piece of plastic. However, upon further inspection I discovered that it was a bone from some sort of marine animal. It smelled highly unpleasant.

-Susan